“I’m glad you’re okay after yesterday.” Erin kept hold of Hawk’s arms as she pulled away to examine him. “That was a vicious battle.”
“You saw?” he asked.
“I may have snuck out to watch some of it from the wall,” she said, and Vargas grunted in disapproval.
When Erin released him and stepped away, I spotted the ball of golden light in her belly and barely managed to stop myself from exclaimingaw! The baby’s soul flashed brighter with every beat of its tiny heart. Erin’s stomach had a slight roundness to it that I wouldn’t have noticed if not for the soul inside her. With as radiant as Erin’s soul was, she could have been pregnant the last time I saw her too, but her glow covered the baby.
Thiswas why she’d been in the hall with the children and why she wasn’t training with us. I understood why Hawk was so confused by her not being a part of the battle; he didn’t know about the baby yet.
“At least more of the horsemen are dead,” Erin said as she sat at the table again and lifted a piece of toast.
“And most of their troopshaveto be dead,” Vargas said as he removed the bacon from the stove.
“I don’t know,” Hawk said. “I don’t even know where they all came from as we’ve cleared a fair amount of the Wilds. And for them to have attacked us with so many at the wall, they had to have been hiding somewhere.”
“But where?” Vargas asked.
“In the Abyss,” Erin said.
“No, Amalia and the jinn still have control over the Abyss,” Hawk said.
“What is the Abyss?” I asked.
“It’s a separate plane ruled by the jinn,” Hawk answered. “But we took it back from the horsemen and the jinn who sided with them.”
“There are still some jinn fighting for the other side,” Vargas said. “Maybe they’ve taken it back from Amalia and Magnus.”
“No,” Hawk said. “They’d send word if they lost control, and it’s only been a couple of weeks since we last saw them. There is no way the horsemen gathered and moved that many troops into the Abyss in such a short time. They’ve been amassing those demons all year and hiding them somewhere.”
“But where?” I asked.
Hawk ran his fingers through his hair and tugged at the ends of it. “I don’t know.”
“Maybe they’ve discovered another plane, like the Abyss,” Erin suggested.
“Or maybe there’s something else out there entirely,” I said.
“Whatever it is, we have to find it, and them, before they can recover enough to come at us again,” Hawk said.
“I didn’t see any jinn yesterday,” Vargas told them.
“Neither did I,” Hawk said.
The crackle of the bacon was the only sound in the kitchen. I shifted as I tried to think of where the horsemen and angels could have been hiding, but I didn’t know the Wilds, and I certainly didn’t know anything about different planes.
“They must have believed they were strong enough to move against us,” Hawk said as he pulled out a chair and looked to me.
I stared at him for too long before figuring out he was holding the chair for me. “Oh, thank you,” I said as I sat.
“Would you like anything?” Vargas asked us.
“No,” Hawk said.
“I wouldn’t mind some toast, bacon, and coffee,” I said.
Erin coughed as she choked on her toast, and Vargas turned to stare at me. Erin sipped her orange juice before speaking. “I’m sorry, I thought you were a demon.”
“I am, but I was once a human, and sometimes I still eat.”
